Turn Left at Bindi Creek Read online

  To Selwa Anthony, dear friend and mentor, with much love

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also By Lynne Wilding

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  Brooke Hastings stepped off the bus and glanced at her watch as she hurried along. She didn’t want to be late, not on her first day. People bustled past, the occasional person brushing her shoulder in their rush to reach their own destinations. It was going to take a while to adjust to the many differences of living in the largest city in Australia, Sydney, after the relative quiet of Launceston. So many people and cars; so much noise and pollution, too.

  At least she had found work. It had taken two weeks, during which time she’d used up most of her meagre savings in bond money and advance rent on an outrageously priced studio apartment in Chippendale. However, winning the medical receptionist’s job at the Erskineville Medical Centre, thanks primarily to the glowing reference of her past employer, Dr Janice Toombes, confirmed the wisdom of her decision to move here. She hoped that in Sydney there would be more opportunities than one could expect in the more provincial Tasmanian town.

  She turned off the main road onto a less busy street where the medical centre was located. Government high-rise apartments loomed in the distance and, on either side of the street, narrow terraces stood in rows with their lace wrought-iron balconies. The occasional brave tree, which refused to give up despite the almost permanent shade and zero nourishment from the surrounding bitumen, shaded the footpath and created patterns of light and dark as she walked along.

  The iron gate creaked as she opened it. She walked up to the front door. Two semis had been converted into a multi-roomed modern medical centre, complete with a part-time physiotherapist and radiologist. She had been impressed when she came for the interview. Everything had been modernised—soft pink walls, grey carpet, comfortable chairs, muted pastel prints on the walls. An air of efficiency prevailed and she’d liked that. Her initial interview with the senior receptionist, Meg Drobovski, had gone well, and she had met the three doctors briefly. Two days later Meg had phoned to tell her she’d got the job.

  Meg looked up as the door opened. She smiled. ‘You’re here, Brooke. And not a moment too soon,’ she said as her gaze ran round the packed waiting room. ‘Come on, let’s get you settled. I’ll show you where to put your bag and things. Dr Smith and Dr Groller are here. Dr d’Winters is late. He’s held up doing house calls.’ She saw Brooke’s surprised expression and explained further. ‘I know most medical centres don’t do house calls, but we do, as an added-value service for our patients, many of whom are quite elderly.’

  Brooke allowed Meg to bustle her past the reception desk and rows of filing cabinets to the tea room, where she was shown a locker and given a key.

  ‘Can’t be too careful around Erskineville, you know. We’ve had patients come in pretending to want a drink of water and then try to steal our purses.’ Meg rolled her eyes. ‘Not like safe old Launceston, I bet.’

  ‘No,’ Brooke agreed, ‘but I’ll get used to it.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Meg smiled approvingly. ‘When you square your things away, I’ll get you started. Since Jenny left I’ve got miles behind with the reports and filing.’

  ‘Oh, two of my favourite things!’ Brooke’s laugh was a touch hesitant. Meg was giving her the impression that this was a busy practice, one in which there wouldn’t be time for the twiddling of thumbs or the contemplation of one’s navel. Good. That was partly why she’d left her job with Janice. The pace had been, well, too laid back for her. She needed to be busy.

  She clucked her tongue impatiently at the brief lapse. She had decided she wasn’t going to do that any more: think about…

  She took a breath and returned to the reception desk. Brooke Hastings had a new life that had started the moment she’d stepped off the plane at Kingsford Smith Airport. Nothing else mattered. No past, just the present, and if she was lucky and worked hard, a reasonable sort of future.

  By the end of the first week Brooke couldn’t believe how consistently busy the surgery was. Most mornings there was standing room only in the waiting room, and it wasn’t until almost the end of surgery hours that the numbers thinned out.

  Dr Paul Groller was a genial Jewish doctor with a slight accent, which bespoke his Eastern European origins. Quietly spoken, and with mildly effeminate mannerisms, he was so gentle with his patients—with everyone—that she suspected he might be homosexual. She soon picked up that the elderly patients loved him. The female doctor in the practice, Christine Smith, was in her late thirties. Meg said she was popular as a family doctor because she not only juggled her share of the practice but was a single mother raising four children with a capability that left everyone breathless. Her being able to do so much impressed most of her patients. Dr Jason d’Winters, the youngest medico of the three, was in his early thirties. While not strictly handsome, he had a sporty, outdoors appeal that the younger male and female patients responded to. This was borne out by his appointment book, which was usually booked solid. Of course, being young and unmarried didn’t hurt either, especially with the unattached females.

  With only two patients left to be seen, Meg and Brooke began to relax.

  ‘Sure you don’t mind coming in Saturday morning?’ Meg asked as she shuffled the day’s patients’ cards into a neat pile. ‘You’ve had a pretty full week, one way or another.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I like to be occupied, and I don’t have anything special planned.’ Which wasn’t strictly true. She had intended to buy some paint to begin repainting her apartment. It was in dire need of an update.

  Meg glanced at her. ‘Finding it a bit lonely in the big smoke, hey? You don’t have any rellies or friends in Sydney, do you?’

  ‘No, but it takes time to settle in. There’s plenty to do around Sydney if I feel like playing tourist. I’ve always been something of a loner, though.’ Brooke’s smile was not in the least self-pitying. If anything, it was practical. ‘I don’t mind my own company.’ (Just as well, she thought, she had plenty of it.)

  ‘We should double-date some time. My boyfriend, Klaus, knows lots of eligible guys in the building game.’

  Brooke managed to disguise her dismay. Dating! Men! She wasn’t interested. Definitely not. Hadn’t been since Hamish McDonald—the very proper Hamish—who had said he’d loved her, but hadn’t really…She shook her head slightly. How stupid she’d been to let Hamish get in under her guard in the first place.

  ‘Yes, maybe…’ She hoped she sounded vague enough for Meg to get the message that she wasn’t particularly interested in dating.

  At the end of Saturday morning surgery, Dr d’Winters called Brooke into his room. ‘Thanks for your h
elp with Mr Stirling. At times he can be a stubborn old codger. The man hates having to take his medication, but if he doesn’t that heart condition of his will have him six foot under in no time at all.’

  ‘Some people find it difficult to remember to take tablets regularly,’ Brooke murmured. She curbed the smile, remembering how Sid Stirling had ranted and raved at Dr d’Winters because his blood pressure was up, as if it was the doctor’s fault. He had been heard all over the surgery.

  ‘Making up that day-by-day chart for him was clever, Brooke. He knows he has to put down two ticks each day when he takes his pills. I hope the chart will act as a memory cue for him.’

  ‘It’s hard for some people, being on their own. No-one around to remind them to do it. He said his wife used to organise his pills and he misses that.’ The old gentleman had told her his wife had passed on a few years ago. She had detected not only sadness in his voice but loneliness too—a state she was now familiar with. She turned to leave the room, only to be stopped by Dr d’Winters.

  ‘I’m throwing a surprise birthday party for Christine next Saturday night. Everyone from the centre’s coming. I hope you will too, if you don’t have anything special on.’

  ‘Thank you, I’d like that,’ Brooke replied spontaneously.

  In the next instant she wondered, was Jason d’Winters merely being thoughtful in asking her, or had Meg prompted the invitation? She’d deduced that the senior receptionist was an inveterate gossip and may have mentioned she was alone in Sydney. Then again, what did it matter? All the doctors and other staff were nice; there seemed to be no pompous ‘I’m better than you ’cause I’m a doctor’ attitude. She’d had to endure that attitude in Hobart, where she’d trained before following her friend, Dr Janice Toombes, to Launceston as her receptionist. So, perhaps she should simply take his invitation at face value and not try to read more into it.

  ‘It’ll be casual,’ Jason assured her. ‘I live in a semi in Fitzroy Street, Newtown. Number fifty-eight. It’s opposite Hollis Park. My place is small.’ He grinned at her. ‘In fact, it gives a whole new meaning to the real estate agents’ term “compact”. Fifteen people or so in the kitchen family room and it’s a wall-to-wall crush.’

  She smiled back as she watched him tidy his desk—something he did each day after surgery finished. He had good surgeon’s hands, she noted. Strong, with long tapered fingers, but the overall look of him was that of a man who, if one wasn’t aware of his profession, you might think worked on a construction site. He was thick-chested, robust in general appearance and, while not overly tall, he lacked nothing in presence. His almost black hair was chronically in need of a trim and his blue eyes were fringed by twin rows of thick dark lashes that would have made most women envious.

  ‘Would you like me to make something, bring a plate?’

  He shook his head emphatically. ‘Just yourself.’

  ‘Okay. What time?’

  ‘About six-thirtyish.’

  After Brooke had left his surgery Jason remained at his desk, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on his desk blotter. Something about Brooke Hastings sparked an interest, but he couldn’t quite define what. Oh, she wasn’t hard to look at, which was a good start. Quite attractive in fact, in a gamine sort of way, with her short-cropped light-brown hair, and her brown eyes which slanted up slightly. She was painfully slim, though, and usually he liked his women to have considerably more flesh on their bones. So what had got his curiosity going, he wondered? Was he attracted to her? Yes, and no.

  Yes because she was physically attractive. She had a nice smile, too—when she smiled, which wasn’t often. She dressed well, if not expensively, as one would expect on her salary. And she was intelligent—perhaps too intelligent to be satisfied with the position of medical receptionist. They were the pluses. The only negative that he sensed, after casually observing her for a week, was that she remained an unknown quantity. He didn’t think that she was being deliberately secretive but, damn it, what was it about her? An air of mystery, of self-containment. As if she didn’t want people to know who the real Brooke Hastings was. He and his partners knew little about her other than the details she had filled out on her employment application form.

  He rubbed his chin, aware of the stubble rasping against his fingers as his thoughts meandered on. Was that why he thought her mysterious? Because she didn’t run off at the mouth about herself and her problems, as Meg and previous receptionists tended to do? Paul and Christine had laughed when he had mentioned this air of mystery about Brooke, and accused him of being fanciful in the extreme. He shrugged his shoulders at their opinion; maybe he was fanciful. Not that he would have described himself that way, far from it. He was country through and through: practical, not particularly romantic, as several of his previous female relationships would attest to, and sometimes restless in Sydney, though he had lived here for many years. No, definitely not the fanciful type.

  He glanced at his watch: 12.35 p.m. Damn! Dismissing his contemplation of Brooke to matters of more importance—today’s cricket game—he bounded from his chair and reached for the sports bag which sat inside the door. He’d need to put his skates on to make it to the oval at Castlecrag on time.

  The taxi deposited Brooke near the kerb of Dr d’Winters home at precisely 6.30 p.m. After paying the driver and watching the taxi speed off, she tried not to think of this evening as a trial of exposure. Relating socially to people she worked with had never been easy for her. As a student she had been something of a swot, more at home with her nose in a textbook than partying whenever the opportunity came up. But, she reminded herself, she had to get used to doing a lot of new things; in fact, she had to get used to a whole new life.

  She squared her shoulders and walked up to the heritage green front door with its stained-glass panel.

  Her knock on the door brought no answer and she cocked her head to one side to listen for party sounds—music, people talking, laughing. Nothing but silence. A frown skimmed across her forehead. Had she got the time wrong, the date? Her upper arm hugged Dr Smith’s present, a silk scarf, more tightly to her body. No, she hadn’t, she was sure of it.

  She rapped again.

  In a few seconds the door was thrown open and Jason d’Winters, a tea towel over one shoulder, a mixing bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other, looked at her and blinked. ‘Brooke. Er…! You’re early.’

  Her eyebrows rose. ‘Am I? Didn’t you say six-thirty?’

  A distracted grin softened his rugged features. ‘I did, but no-one ever comes on time. Sydney people generally don’t like to be seen to be the first to arrive, so they all bowl in about an hour after the stated time.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know.’

  ‘Not to worry. You know what this means, don’t you?’ He saw her blank look and his grin widened. ‘You’ll have to help me with the last-minute details.’

  ‘I’d be happy to.’

  There was something likeable about Dr d’Winters, she had to admit. The man had the knack of putting people at their ease straightaway and he appeared to be a no-nonsense, no-fuss kind of guy. She liked that in a man.

  ‘Come in.’

  He took her purse and jacket and placed them casually on the bed in what was obviously, from the masculine overtones, his bedroom. A Black Watch tartan doona stretched across the bed, and on the wall above the bedhead sat three prints of wild ducks in various positions of flight. An old fireplace with a marble mantel above it held an array of photos in different-shaped frames, some old, some new. A wicker basket contained an overflow of various items of sporting equipment: a cricket bat, tennis racquets, a soccer ball and several golf clubs. She glimpsed timber venetians across the small window, and all the darkly stained furniture was, she guessed, reproduction Victoriana to fit in with the semi, which appeared to be more than a hundred years old.

  Their footsteps echoed on the polished timber floor as he took her through the house. There was a second, very small bedroom, then a compact living room
with another fireplace and one wall lined with bookshelves to the ceiling. Then they moved along a narrow passageway off which she glimpsed a combination bathroom-cum-laundry, and down three steps into a large open space, which contained a modern galley-style kitchen, a long rectory table and chairs, a high-backed dresser displaying plates and other knick-knacks, and a leather sofa. A rug in colours that matched the decor completed the furnishings, while two skylights threw an abundance of twilight into the room, negating the need for electricity until later on. The back wall consisted of curtainless floor-to-ceiling windows and beyond was a paved area with a covered pergola, which took up most of the pocket handkerchief-sized backyard. On the pavers, amid the yellow and orange leaves that were dropping from a neighbour’s maple tree, stood several brightly painted outdoor chairs and a Weber barbecue.

  For a moment Brooke couldn’t help but compare her shabby apartment with Dr d’Winters’s semi, but really, there was no comparison. And she didn’t want to remember further back to her mother’s weatherboard cottage in Hobart, where she had grown up. To do so would trigger the melancholy, the regrets…

  ‘Right.’ He looked at her beige slacks and loose, mauve patterned shirt. ‘Let me find an apron for you. Don’t want you to make a mess as you mix this mayonnaise for me.’ One eyebrow raised questioningly, he asked, ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ She almost said that she never made a mess when she cooked, that she was the neatest cook she knew, but refrained from the remark because it sounded self-opinionated. She said instead, ‘This—your place—is lovely. A real surprise.’

  He laughed briefly, the sides of his mouth crinkling into deep grooves. ‘I know what you mean. When you get to the front door, you’re inclined to think the place is a dump, or at best, pretty ordinary. Since I paid off my uni fees I’ve spent a lot of money sprucing the place up.’

  ‘You did it yourself?’

  ‘Some bits, like the bookshelves. The stained glass at the front door too. But I had a builder do the rest. He put an attic room in too. There’s one of those pulldown attic ladders tucked away in the hallway ceiling. I use the attic as a study.